Gravity
by tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Yashiro can feel these memories going too, all the knowledge of Kuroh sliding from his mental grasp to shatter apart on impact with the cold wall in the other's eyes." Kuroh forgets Yashiro, and then he doesn't.


Yashiro has no idea where he is.

The surroundings are normal in themselves, ordinary buildings and ordinary people and ordinary sounds; the sun is high in the sky, it looks like it's early afternoon, Yashiro's standing on the sidewalk with the crowd parting easily around him, and nothing of this should be terrifying. But his skin is crawling with a premonition, a horror of some barely-sensed impending revelation that freezes him in place where he stands even as his body screams at him to _run_. He can't run, where would he even run to, after all, he doesn't know where he is or where he should go, he can barely remember who he is and certainly not how he got here.

There's movement at the corner of his eyes, a flicker of motion so familiar Yashiro is turning in towards it before his memory has placed the sight. There's a long coat, open so the wind is catching it, dark hair catching on narrow shoulders, a face that looks too young for the tension in the mouth and the focus in the eyes, and Yashiro starts to smile in relief even before he moves in after the other boy.

"Kuroh!" His voice is lost to the crowd, he can barely hear himself and Kuroh doesn't turn in response to his name. Yashiro has to push through the crowd, work his way closer while jogging to keep pace with the other's long strides. The other boy is watching the ground, brow creased in concentration, and he doesn't look up until Yashiro closes his fingers on the sleeve of the familiar darkness of the coat. "Kuroh, hey, where are we?"

The other boy glances at the hand on his sleeve and looks up at Yashiro's face; then he grimaces, twitches his coat free as he comes to a halt, and the cold foreboding of a moment before rushes back into Yashiro's blood, though some desperate self-preservation is keeping him from looking at that epiphany directly.

"My apologies," Kuroh says coolly, though his face is creased in confusion. "Do we know each other?"

There are things Yashiro could say. Protests, explanations, even just an apology, but none of them come to his mind. His memory is throwing up wave after wave of images, the feel of that coat under his fingers familiar from more than just this one touch, the way Kuroh looks when he smiles, the taste of the other boy's cooking, the weight of his shoulder pressing in against Yashiro's body, all of them fading into sepia under the blank consideration in Kuroh's eyes. Those _happened_, Yashiro _knows_ they happened, he can _remember_ all of them, but he remembered other things that didn't happen, too, didn't he? He can't recall now what they were, that's less important, but he knows they were false, that all the import of his memories evaporated in the light of reality, just like he can feel these ones going too, all the knowledge of Kuroh sliding from his mental grasp to shatter apart on impact with the cold wall in the other's eyes.

"Oh," he says, sounding lost. When he blinks the world shifts, the people around him and the warmth of the sunshine and the stability of the ground starting to dissolve away so he wonders vaguely if he's going to faint. But Kuroh stays steady, his expression stays chill and distant while everything else vanishes, until Yashiro lifts a hand out to reach for something, anything to steady himself, and when he blinks everything is gone but darkness.

He stays very still for a moment, waiting to make sure he still exists. Without anyone else's memory he thinks he might melt into nothing, simply take a breath and fly apart into his component atoms until there is nothing left of Yashiro Isana at all. But he breathes into real lungs, and he curls real fingers, and when he blinks his eyes start to adjust to the darkness, shapes forming out of nothing until they solidify, and one moves, and turns into Kuroh.

"Are you awake?" he asks.

Yashiro blinks at him, trying to piece together meaning out of the words, and Kuroh chuckles. "You look like you're still more than half-asleep."

"I was dreaming," Yashiro says, still staring at Kuroh's face and trying to reconcile the cold expression in his head with _dream_ instead of _reality_.

"Mm." Kuroh looks back out. "Something good?"

"No." Yashiro pushes himself up - he was asleep on a coat, the texture familiar under his fingers even before he looks back up to see Kuroh's shirt absent its usual cover. "I dreamt you forgot me."

That gets Kuroh's attention again. His head comes back around so he can stare at Yashiro. His eyes are endless in the dark, Yashiro can't read his expression at all. "What?"

"Like all my classmates." He draws his knees up to his chest, wraps his arms around them. "You didn't remember me at all."

There's a pause. When Kuroh speaks again his voice is forcefully light, like he's clinging to teasing. "Your unconscious is even more unreasonable than most people's. There's no way I'd forget you, you're way too much of a nuisance."

Yashiro smiles at the attempted joke, but the tension in his mouth just makes his throat close up, and he has to turn his head down against his knees while he tries to breathe past the burn of almost-tears at the back of his eyes. It doesn't help, not enough, not when his head is replaying the last of his dream like a mantra so he can't let the panic of his subconscious go.

"Shiro?" There's a pause while Yashiro tries to get his throat under control and fails. Kuroh makes a sound that is a little bit panic and a little bit concern; a moment later there's an arm around Yashiro's shoulders, dragging him in against the other boy's chest so he loses his balance and has to reach out to catch himself on Kuroh's shoulder.

"I'm not going to forget you," Kuroh says over Yashiro's head. "You can worry about everyone else but I'm not going to."

Yashiro slides his arm sideways, curls his fingers in against the back of Kuroh's neck, as if the contact will tether him to the world he can feel floating away from him. "I feel like I'm dissolving," he says, too desperate to even mind the way his voice breaks. "No one remembers me and all my memories are false and I...if no one knows who I am it's like I'm not even real."

Kuroh's hand comes up against the back of Yashiro's head, hard enough that he pushes the other boy in closer. He doesn't loosen his hold or apologize, and when he speaks again his mouth is so close to Yashiro's head that his words ruffle against the other boy's hair. "_I_ know. I will remember."

It's a ridiculous thing to ask. Yashiro knows that, it's too much too ask, it's an impossible request, but the terror of his nightmare is still shaking through him like it's gained force with the delayed reaction, and Kuroh's shoulders are strong and steady under his hands and he can't _not_ say, "Do you promise?"

"I promise," Kuroh says instantly, without hesitating at all. Then he moves, tips his head; there's a press against the edge of Yashiro's forehead, warm and damp, and it's not until Kuroh is pulling away that the other boy recognizes it as a kiss, and by then it's too late to do anything about it. So he doesn't say anything, and Kuroh doesn't say anything.

Neither of them lets go.


End file.
